After, what has it been, a week? With no new post, I kept on nagging myself to write something, so here is that something. Although it may be old, and you may have seen it already, here’s a video proving that VISTA DID NOT COPY OS X!!!1

Our favorite source for h4xxored stuff, Bittorrent, is now all legit. They announced their move to being unillegal a month or so ago, and implemented it yesterday. Similarly, Last.FM was down last time I went there, but they say they’re just cleaning out their database. You can still get h4xxored torrents from Yotoshi, but you didn’t hear it from us…

While, after seeing the “EVO Launch Sequence Initiated!” story on the front of Customize.org for 17 days, they finally followed through. Customize.org Beta, which is available to members only at this point, is a big upgrade. On the front page, the news and latest discussion is on the left, with shiny RSS buttons for the feeds, while the latest and greatest submissions greet you on the right. Popular links are on the top, tab style, and the other ones, like profile settings, sit at the bottom. Everywhere you go, tag clouds are there (yeah, yeah, I’m working on it for this blog). When you click on a preview, the background fades and up comes a snazzy Lightbox image. When you click on “Browse”, a tag cloud appears with the categories. Users can add skins to their favorites (‘Like it’ or ‘Love it’) and the like. One thing that’s really interesting: sorting skins by color. They draw the most populous colors from the screenshot, and then list them. You can search or browse by color, a very innovative method. I finally was able to upload Vista Cal 2, and another skin I made, LH Aero, and Vista Cal 2 got a comment about 1 minute after the upload! I gotta go upload a screenshot, so keep an eye on my gallery. Check out a screenshot for non-members after the break.

I am making a new site for skinning. It will host links to skins, show off my own, and have guides for n00bs. I’m planning on having it go live sometime this week. If you’re interested in helping with it (writing guides or posts, putting up links, etc.), leave a comment. Check out a preview after the jump!

*YAWN* it’s been a slow weekend for something good to post. Customize.org has initiated their 2.0 launch sequence, keeping me from posting Vista Cal v2, Intel demoed an 80-core processor, and Patrick Star is running for President. I had time to make a new header (look above) and do nothing. Hopefully something exciting will happen tomorrow…

Have you ever dared yourself not to use Google when you search? I have, for a while now. Along the way I’ve discovered a bunch of different engines, but not as many as the list of ‘100 Alternative Search Engines‘ at Read/WriteWeb. They aren’t listing ‘classics’ such as AltaVista because, to make the list, they have to have been updated within the past year. (I cannot believe I get to use the ‘100 Things‘ tag again!)

When you’re done checking out Ask X, look at some of these off the list:

Like – it finds stuff (mainly clothes) by comparing them to what’s in a photo.

SearchMash – Google’s testing grounds, it has Google’s results in an updated interface

WhoNu? – I’m going to be trying this – it puts site-specific tools from engines like Google and Ask all together, plus a plethora of other tools that I have no idea what they do. They also let you search a ton of different engines from their site, all in a shiny AJAX interface.

Url.com – a little like the late search engine Huckabuck, it searches a few Google, MSN, and Yahoo!, but the results are ranked by users. Apparently, my site gets a ‘Bullseye’, which means that when you search for ‘technigma’, it registers as the number one result on all three engines. Also, it seems that if you register (which I might be doing later), it will take you directly there. Kinda like ‘I’m feeling lucky’, but more betterer.

With Vista having been released a few weeks ago, some people may have forgotten the reason why it’s called the ‘Start Button’: it used to say start on the button. I do say the Vista flag orb looks better than its predecessors, but there is less area for you to click. Anywho, check out a look back thru the start button versions.